Ready, Steady...

Boxes of intellectual goodies, other boxes of iron rations (but delicious with it), small pieces of furniture to make me particularly comfortable - very pretty little arts and crafts table, lamps, pictures etc., all the things you can't leave in an empty house - at the ready.

Boots for walking, wellies for mud, thick socks, warm clothes to lounge about in, all brushed cotton (or winceyette as once it was known) - at the ready.

New gardening gloves (when will I learn to wash the mud off before putting them aside?) This weekend would be the 2009 season's opening of the ecohouse.

It's snowing.

Quite possibly there could be wolves. Yes there could. Something has eaten all the lines of irises.



Iris-eating wolves

March

Still no sign of the tortoises but while working with the large digger at the ecohouse the road builder noticed something wriggle in the freshly disturbed ground. Being a kindly and gentle man with all the respect for other creatures hunters display he got down from his cab and found a tiny hare trembling in its destroyed home.

Knowing that its chances of survival were now very low, separation from the mother almost always leads to death although they are born fully formed with fur and eyes open, he put the tiny creature in his pocket and took it home to his wife.

"Put your hand in my pocket!" he told her.
"Stop it. It's lunch time. Give over.'
"Go on. There's a surprise"

So she did. The whole family is now engaged in bringing up baby. Feeding bottle, rota, artificial form built in the kitchen (outside the dogs would have it in no time). Hares are not supposed to be domestic creatures, they are unlike rabbits often kept as pets (I have quite large holes bitten out of a kelim covered in flowers the rabbits thought to test for tastiness), but this one is settled in happily and growing fast, recognises everybody but loves the road builder's wife the best.

We're invited round to meet it when it's a bit bigger. I'll get some pix.

Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita, Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

Gates to the ecohouse

La Ronda

Out looking for the tortoises I found a slaughtered pigeon at the bottom of the garden, next to the apse wall. It has taken this long for anyone else to venture into Guglielmo's domain.

Here he is on his last patrol.

Entitlement

Mr Berlusconi has announced that we are all right for those little adjustments to our living spaces we have all made while the various planning agencies that hold la Bella Italia (or it wouldn't be) so tightly under control were not looking. He has even stated that the regions can now permit up to 30% expansion of buildings within the local plan regulations. Most local plans are currently in a state of suspension as there are so many factors to be embodied. Our Comune's local plan has not yet materialised but when it does it will contain my tractor shed denounced to the authorities by the owners of the night club which, in turn, had been denounced to the authorities for change of use by a disturbed neighbour (those throbbing summer nights must have been hard to bear but he landed us all in retaliatory doodoo).

Anyway, not only have we now squeezed the tractor shed under the bar ( the authorities thought it most tastefully and discreetly done and only denouncable because of the lack of local plan) but can add 30%.

I thought an upper floor with large studio, curtain glass walls, gazing out across the upper Valdarno towards Siena and opening out onto a live-on verandah (which wouldn't count in the 30%), with separate kitchen and wet room. I could write my novel !

But 'Room with a View' and 'Where Angels Fear to Tread' have been taken. Blocked already.

Corruption and its Pitfalls

The question is, which was called in first: la Guardia di Finanza (with golden wings emblazoned on their caps and uniforms, and empowered by drachonian laws) or the Carabinieri (with red-stripes on their trousers, cloaks and cockaded tricorn hats, empowered by local knowledge). Both are armed.

The Comune is reeling under financial inspection of every nook and cranny. Who set it all going? And if the Carabinieri came in second, what did the Finanza find? Or were there two denuncias? And who has denounced whom, and was it openly or anonymously? It must be very serious to have got both lots going.

The allocation of four units of social housing to the ruling giunta's client base without reference to the housing list was but setting the match to the blue touchpaper. Unfortunately the giunta didn't retire quickly enough and the whole place is going up.

Monculi Towers and the Palazzo del Comune march shoulder to shoulder on the two sides of the Borgo; our windows look into their offices floor for floor (I have blinds and linen curtains deeply inset with aging lacy crochet-work that stops them looking right back.) We can hear every word in the summer and retire to the top floor to have scenes, the Towers being taller than the Comune, but it's winter and we can't hear properly.

The Giunta has run out of money to pay the employees, and is all ready charging top whack of permissable council tax. No credit of course because of the Crunch. Could the disgruntled losers among the client base have turned upon the hand that, up to now, feeds them? Has some whistle-blower's son/daughter/granny failed to be allocated one of the social housing units? More follows if sunny and warm on Monday.

Update

Overcast. Cold. All windows closed. Come back tomorrow.

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are!

Here is Prince Philip (the tortoise formerly known as Lenin) last summer. Whereabouts currently unknown, though he's somewhere under the garden, and re-emergence is expected momentarily.

Lay-Offs Strike Monculi

The gold factories are beginning to lay-off workers. Half the village is sitting about at home irritating their wives and fidgeting about. The wives have cleaned everything inside and out and are now eyeing my establishment - long regarded as a centre of casual dusting and too much laughing going on.

There have been phone calls about the need for domestic staff. I do not want domestic staff. They bully me and make me clear out cupboards that are full of the past laid to quiet rest. They polish clock faces and ruin them. They make me look through piles of papers that have grown on handy surfaces and put them away or throw them away. They tell me terrible stories of the past, right back to the beginning of time. They are very kind to me because I am not Italian (though it isn't my fault and isn't as bad as being extra-comunitare). They wonder what I need all these books for.

They talk among themselves about cooking with butter and eating brussels sprouts, not to speak of Mr HG not having his socks switched to mezza stagione on 1 March. Or getting his own lunch (I cook the dinner, but we can't eat three courses twice a day).

They are out there while I polish and arrange and sweep stony stairs to deny them access. This recession has got to end or I will be taken over and italicised

Prosciutto

It may be the delicacy; it may come in various forms - dolce, nostrale; it may be hand-cut or wafer-thin from the machine; it may head the league of companatico (that which is to be eaten with bread), of salami, mortadella, soprassata, a quick rub-over with half an onion.

I write as I eat my merenda - prosciutto pannino with radicchio and a smear of soft cream cheese, glass of local red. But I write too as the figurative subaltern found (early in my mediterranean life) discreetly frying up a couple of slices of prosciutto, with tomatoes and lettuce at the ready, roll sliced open on the bread board.

What a waste of best back bacon.

Mimosa

Thank goodness winter is over. Mimosa now, tortoises soon.